Abstract

The effects of annealing methods on the crystallization process and microstructure of polycrystalline silicon (poly-Si) films obtained by aluminum-induced crystallization (AIC) of amorphous Si (a-Si) films were comparatively investigated. Glass/Al/a-Si structures were annealed by rapid thermal annealing (RTA) and conventional furnace at 500 °C for different times in Ar. As compared to furnace annealing, AIC of a-Si films annealed by RTA possesses a shorter period of nucleation time, a higher nucleation density and reduces the process time to form continuous poly-Si films. It is revealed that the continuous Si films obtained by both RTA and conventional furnace annealing are polycrystalline in nature, exhibiting good microstructures with Raman peaks at 518 cm−1 and full-width at half-maximums of 6.43–6.48 cm−1.

Notes

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge Professor Kwang-Leong Choy from the University of Nottingham for helpful discussion. This work is supported by the Ningbo Natural Science Foundation (No.2012A610120) and K.C.Wong Magna Fund in Ningbo University.